Hahaha! Is there a conspiracy you don't believe? Or do you just swallow everything whole?

for people like mr. green genes, believing in conspiracy theories is an easy way to explain things they wouldn't otherwise understand.

Well everything in that video is fact. Read gmails privacy policy and press releases, it is all stated fact. Whether you see it as nefarious, or simply an ad campaign is entirely up to you of course. But remember they cooperate fully with censorship in China. Also, your quaint little psychological explanation for conspiracy theories is such a lame way to discredit anything you don't want to believe. I've heard it so many times, and when you read what "proffesional psychologists" have to say on the matter, it is completely laughable. Like believing your government is amassing profiling data on your every internet move is comforting and helps us cope with the vast uncertainties of google. what a joke!

Hahaha! Is there a conspiracy you don't believe? Or do you just swallow everything whole?

for people like mr. green genes, believing in conspiracy theories is an easy way to explain things they wouldn't otherwise understand.

Well everything in that video is fact. Read gmails privacy policy and press releases, it is all stated fact. Whether you see it as nefarious, or simply an ad campaign is entirely up to you of course. But remember they cooperate fully with censorship in China. Also, your quaint little psychological explanation for conspiracy theories is such a lame way to discredit anything you don't want to believe. I've heard it so many times, and when you read what "proffesional psychologists" have to say on the matter, it is completely laughable. Like believing your government is amassing profiling data on your every internet move is comforting and helps us cope with the vast uncertainties of google. what a joke!

HOLY SHIT!!!! STOP THE PRESSES! You got FOWL, of all people, to comment on a conspiracy!

_________________One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.

As I age, I find that, like myself, the government just doesn't give a shit. I mean, these aren't evil geniuses we're dealing with. They're 2.0 graduates with a lot of desire for personal power. I personally don't believe they have the mental capacity to worry about what every single person is doing, nor do they care. They just like being the king.

_________________Let's hear it again for the London Philharmonic Orchestra!

Governments, at least the public heads, likely are just bumbling fools with oratory skills. The bankers printing the money and pulling the strings unfortunately are not. Do you really think things like war and a multi trillion dollar military industrial complex are just mistakes that happen due to incompetency?

Governments, at least the public heads, likely are just bumbling fools with oratory skills. The bankers printing the money and pulling the strings unfortunately are not. Do you really think things like war and a multi trillion dollar military industrial complex are just mistakes that happen due to incompetency?

Geez, FOWL, what can us ordinary citizens do about it then? Should I live my life in constant fear that governments and bankers and the money people run things?

_________________One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.

As I age, I find that, like myself, the government just doesn't give a shit. I mean, these aren't evil geniuses we're dealing with. They're 2.0 graduates with a lot of desire for personal power. I personally don't believe they have the mental capacity to worry about what every single person is doing, nor do they care. They just like being the king.

That's awesome, feets. (I miss the "thumbs up" icon)

The downside of these average intelligence power mongers, though, is that they realize the power to be gained by capitalizing on people's fears and they won't hesitate to ruin somebody's life to make them a scapegoat or a stepping stone if it serves as a means to an end. Certainly not geniuses, but still quite evil and desperate in their need for power. They hire smart people to figure out their ruthless shortcuts for them. A good movie for this is "Bush's Brain." (If you have Netflix, it's one of the "browse instant" movies.)

If this sounds like I'm disagreeing, I'm not...I think everything you said is right and I don't buy into most conspiracy theories...I'm just drifting off on a tangent for a second because I just saw that movie a couple of nights ago.

_________________“The person who stands up and says, 'This is stupid,' either is asked to behave or, worse, is greeted with a cheerful 'Yes, we know! Isn't it terrific!" -Frank Zappa

-you know..I can't wait when I'm running for some kind of bullshit public office like local supervisor or the goddamn fucking president of the fucking USA-THEN SOME weasel blackmails me, 'cuz I've been downloading cheesy chinese fake lesbos porn.Like GOOGLE THIS.

-because of spelling errors-due to nearsightedness or age or both-edited a total of four times-because I care,goddamnit.

I thought it was common knowledge that Google tracks every move you make?

Well, the issue is then whether they cooperate with the CIA. Are there any evidence? For a European, such a scheme would not be that surprising. But some indications would be nice. In any case, that is how "intelligence" is supposed to work. Isn't it? Getting info about others from whatever sources you can at any cost?

As I age, I find that, like myself, the government just doesn't give a shit. I mean, these aren't evil geniuses we're dealing with. They're 2.0 graduates with a lot of desire for personal power. I personally don't believe they have the mental capacity to worry about what every single person is doing, nor do they care. They just like being the king.

Maybe the government will buy it of them when Google the Nosey bastard finished.And the subsidize it or something

-like for every person with a computer,there's another person with a computer with the job of tracking every little online computer move- & the question remains- who is spying on those that spy,huh? huh? huh? just maybe there's another dimension set up for the sole purpose of spying on this one,& beyond that,a third set up for the sole purpose of
spying on the one that is set up to spy on this one,etc.

In fact,reality is one vast conspiracy set up to make you think it's real,when in fact only half of it is.You have to figure out what part is real & what part is fake.All by yourself.Unless,of course, you're paying someone to tell you.

In fact,reality is one vast conspiracy set up to make you think it's real,when in fact only half of it is.You have to figure out what part is real & what part is fake.All by yourself.Unless,of course, you're paying someone to tell you.

I'm more worried about the NSA. They use the latest supercooled Crays and are tied into the Internet backbones at several points. They have tremendous computing power and can record all Internet traffic as well as scan it based on many different search criteria. Also, they have the keys to Microsofts strongest 128 bit Public/Private key encryption, meaning even with the strongest encryption protocols, the government can still read it, (it's illegal to market an encryption protocol in this country without giving the government the keys).

Congress and the administration (and yes Jimmie, including the Democrats), are falling over themselves scrambling to remove our fundamental privacy rights.

Therefore, the NSA has access to all traffic, all data, and all emails, (not just gmail), and they can read it all, even communication with the strongest encryption, (something Google should not be able to do unless the gov't gave them the keys).

The NSA is ULTRA secretive, even the building is a black box.

With regards to Google in the video...
There's a high percentage of factual info in it, but some of the conclusions may be a bit of a step beyond what the facts point to (imho)...

For examples:
"Storing the whole Internet on their computers" -Word lists simply scan documents (normally web pages that have been posted with public access availability), for unique words, rather than storing the whole web page on the (google in this case), computer. Word lists store the unique words on a page, mapped to a reference to the page each word came from (and the actual page can change after it's been scanned, new or deleted words won't be reflected in the word list unless the page is scanned again). If a word has already been found on a page, more occurences of that word are discarded. The result is a list of the unique words on a page, without any care to sentence structure or content. Word lists are not documents, so to say "all the web is stored on Google" is not exactly true, and Google also does not know anything about pages it hasn't had reason to scan.

Another example might be the jump to "they could have a file on everything about everyone, including your DNA" This seems to be based on all this information being available from everyone through some people's use of gmail, (watch the video where it flows from gmail, to a complete file on everyone). It's a little dubious that googles involvement in genetic engeneering would allow them to have everyone's genetic info because some people use gmail. What about people who don't use gmail, or more importantly what about MAJORITY people who have never had their DNA sequenced, (to say nothing of the HUGE storage necessitated by attempting to store the genome of 6 billion people...and if they could invest the money into aquiring and storing everyone's genome, why the hell would they want to do that?

There is a lot of factual information in that video. Google does mine data many ways , and as well as they can...information is their business.

But it's the NSA that already has these abilities and more, much more than googles, no speculation about what they might be able to do is necessary.

To me, it's good to be aware of these things. It's even more important to focus energy at the core of the problem, which is the masses of people voting for rulers who take away our rights (PATRIOT and MCA Acts), and funnel our taxes into such things as the NSA. The NSA is just another symptom of the assholes we vote in to rule over us. There are people we could vote in who would instantly reverse these things...but we're not smart enough to vote them in, we scramble to vote the assholes in instead.

I'm more worried about the NSA. They use the latest supercooled Crays and are tied into the Internet backbones at several points. They have tremendous computing power and can record all Internet traffic as well as scan it based on many different search criteria. Also, they have the keys to Microsofts strongest 128 bit Public/Private key encryption, meaning even with the strongest encryption protocols, the government can still read it, (it's illegal to market an encryption protocol in this country without giving the government the keys).

Congress and the administration (and yes Jimmie, including the Democrats), are falling over themselves scrambling to remove our fundamental privacy rights.

Therefore, the NSA has access to all traffic, all data, and all emails, (not just gmail), and they can read it all, even communication with the strongest encryption, (something Google should not be able to do unless the gov't gave them the keys).

The NSA is ULTRA secretive, even the building is a black box.

With regards to Google in the video...There's a high percentage of factual info in it, but some of the conclusions may be a bit of a step beyond what the facts point to (imho)...

For examples:"Storing the whole Internet on their computers" -Word lists simply scan documents (normally web pages that have been posted with public access availability), for unique words, rather than storing the whole web page on the (google in this case), computer. Word lists store the unique words on a page, mapped to a reference to the page each word came from (and the actual page can change after it's been scanned, new or deleted words won't be reflected in the word list unless the page is scanned again). If a word has already been found on a page, more occurences of that word are discarded. The result is a list of the unique words on a page, without any care to sentence structure or content. Word lists are not documents, so to say "all the web is stored on Google" is not exactly true, and Google also does not know anything about pages it hasn't had reason to scan.

Another example might be the jump to "they could have a file on everything about everyone, including your DNA" This seems to be based on all this information being available from everyone through some people's use of gmail, (watch the video where it flows from gmail, to a complete file on everyone). It's a little dubious that googles involvement in genetic engeneering would allow them to have everyone's genetic info because some people use gmail. What about people who don't use gmail, or more importantly what about MAJORITY people who have never had their DNA sequenced, (to say nothing of the HUGE storage necessitated by attempting to store the genome of 6 billion people...and if they could invest the money into aquiring and storing everyone's genome, why the hell would they want to do that?

There is a lot of factual information in that video. Google does mine data many ways , and as well as they can...information is their business.

But it's the NSA that already has these abilities and more, much more than googles, no speculation about what they might be able to do is necessary.

To me, it's good to be aware of these things. It's even more important to focus energy at the core of the problem, which is the masses of people voting for rulers who take away our rights (PATRIOT and MCA Acts), and funnel our taxes into such things as the NSA. The NSA is just another symptom of the assholes we vote in to rule over us. There are people we could vote in who would instantly reverse these things...but we're not smart enough to vote them in, we scramble to vote the assholes in instead.

I totally agree with you baddy, except maybe you aren't aware of the program that has been going on in British Commonwealth and the US since the mid seventies storing two ampules of blood from every person born in a hospital. What they are doing with this genetic data is unknown, but it is fact that they have the blood of nearly everyone around 35 and younger.

The government that is, not google!
The other thing along this line that is completely frightening is IBM's involvement of the human genome project. If you open up a copy of National Geographic, you'll see the first ad in every issue is asking you to take part in this marvelous project, send IBM your genes!!! Well anyone who knows the history of IBM's intimate involvement with Nazi Germany, and procurement of Nazi scientists post ww2, will see that the human genome project is being used for the furtherance of the eugenic program. Race specific bio-weapons anyone?

for people like mr. green genes, believing in conspiracy theories is an easy way to explain things they wouldn't otherwise understand.

Mr_Green_Genes wrote:

Yes, I am really stupid. Would you care to explain it to me, please, your highness?

well, believing in conspiracy theories is the same as believing that everything bad that happens, can be explained in an easy way. "the government is behind it." it simplifies things. it gives you an answer. it fits your image and it fits your belief that governments are all bad.

on the other hand, some people believe that the government is always right and always tell the truth. and I don't see any difference between the two different camps of believers. both believe what they want to believe. both want to be comfortable and safe in their beliefs.

to me, the reality of events (good and bad) is far more complicated.

__________________________________
and, of course, when I say 'the government', I'm not only referring to the american one.

The government that is, not google! The other thing along this line that is completely frightening is IBM's involvement of the human genome project. If you open up a copy of National Geographic, you'll see the first ad in every issue is asking you to take part in this marvelous project, send IBM your genes!!! Well anyone who knows the history of IBM's intimate involvement with Nazi Germany, and procurement of Nazi scientists post ww2, will see that the human genome project is being used for the furtherance of the eugenic program. Race specific bio-weapons anyone?

So you are saying that IBM and the nazis are actively working together to kill off a specific race.

_________________“The person who stands up and says, 'This is stupid,' either is asked to behave or, worse, is greeted with a cheerful 'Yes, we know! Isn't it terrific!" -Frank Zappa

baddy, I don't see a picture of anything there. Just the macrostructure floating in space, disconnected from the ground of reality all together . . .
it is pretty tricky how they put the mirrors up there to make it look like the parking lot keeps going though, I have to say (:
plus I think they changed the name of it. The people that do the REALLY secret stuff is not the NSA anymore because too many people called it 'Not Secret Anymore' after people were calling it 'No Such Agency' on CNN . . .

Joined: Tue Oct 29, 2002 12:41 pmPosts: 14039Location: From some place in this area...

Is Google Evil?

Adam L. Penenberg / Mother Jones | October 19 2006

Internet privacy? Google already knows more about you than the National Security Agency ever will. And don't assume for a minute it can keep a secret. YouTube fans--and everybody else--beware.

Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the two former Stanford geeks who founded the company that has become synonymous with Internet searching, and you’ll find more than a million entries each. But amid the inevitable dump of press clippings, corporate bios, and conference appearances, there’s very little about Page’s and Brin’s personal lives; it’s as if the pair had known all along that Google would change the way we acquire information, and had carefully insulated their lives—putting their homes under other people’s names, choosing unlisted numbers, abstaining from posting anything personal on web pages.

That obsession with privacy may explain Google’s puzzling reaction last year, when Elinor Mills, a reporter with the tech news service cnet, ran a search on Google CEO Eric Schmidt and published the results: Schmidt lived with his wife in Atherton, California, was worth about $1.5 billion, had dumped about $140 million in Google shares that year, was an amateur pilot, and had been to the Burning Man festival. Google threw a fit, claimed that the information was a security threat, and announced it was blacklisting cnet’s reporters for a year. (The company eventually backed down.) It was a peculiar response, especially given that the information Mills published was far less intimate than the details easily found online on every one of us. But then, this is something of a pattern with Google: When it comes to information, it knows what’s best.

From the start, Google’s informal motto has been “Don’t Be Evil,” and the company earned cred early on by going toe-to-toe with Microsoft over desktop software and other issues. But make no mistake. Faced with doing the right thing or doing what is in its best interests, Google has almost always chosen expediency. In 2002, it removed links to an anti-Scientology site after the Church of Scientology claimed copyright infringement. Scores of website operators have complained that Google pulls ads if it discovers words on a page that it apparently has flagged, although it will not say what those words are. In September, Google handed over the records of some users of its social-networking service, Orkut, to the Brazilian government, which was investigating alleged racist, homophobic, and pornographic content.

Google’s stated mission may be to provide “unbiased, accurate, and free access to information,” but that didn’t stop it from censoring its Chinese search engine to gain access to a lucrative market (prompting Bill Gates to crack that perhaps the motto should be “Do Less Evil”). Now that the company is publicly traded, it has a legal responsibility to its shareholders and bottom line that overrides any higher calling.

So the question is not whether Google will always do the right thing—it hasn’t, and it won’t. It’s whether Google, with its insatiable thirst for your personal data, has become the greatest threat to privacy ever known, a vast informational honey pot that attracts hackers, crackers, online thieves, and—perhaps most worrisome of all—a government intent on finding convenient ways to spy on its own citizenry.

It doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to worry about such a threat. “I always thought it was fertile ground for the government to snoop,” CEO Schmidt told a search engine conference in San Jose, California, in August. While Google earned praise from civil libertarians earlier this year when it resisted a Justice Department subpoena for millions of search queries in connection with a child pornography case, don’t expect it will stand up to the government every time: On its website, Google asserts that it “does comply with valid legal process, such as search warrants, court orders, or subpoenas seeking personal information.”

What’s at stake? Over the years, Google has collected a staggering amount of data, and the company cheerfully admits that in nine years of operation, it has never knowingly erased a single search query. It’s the biggest data pack rat west of the NSA, and for good reason: 99 percent of its revenue comes from selling ads that are specifically targeted to a user’s interests. “Google’s entire value proposition is to figure out what people want,” says Eric Goldman, a professor at Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara School of Law and director of the High Tech Law Institute. “But to read our minds, they need to know a lot about us.”

Every search engine gathers information about its users—primarily by sending us “cookies,” or text files that track our online movements. Most cookies expire within a few months or years. Google’s, though, don’t expire until 2038. Until then, when you use the company’s search engine or visit any of myriad affiliated sites, it will record what you search for and when, which links you click on, which ads you access. Google’s cookies can’t identify you by name, but they log your computer’s IP address; by way of metaphor, Google doesn’t have your driver’s license number, but it knows the license plate number of the car you are driving. And search queries are windows into our souls, as 658,000 AOL users learned when their search profiles were mistakenly posted on the Internet: Would user 1997374 have searched for information on better erections or cunnilingus if he’d known that AOL was recording every keystroke? Would user 22155378 have keyed in “marijuana detox” over and over knowing someone could play it all back for the world to see? If you’ve ever been seized by a morbid curiosity after a night of hard drinking, a search engine knows—and chances are it’s Google, which owns roughly half of the entire search market and processes more than 3 billion queries a month.

And Google knows far more than that. If you are a Gmail user, Google stashes copies of every email you send and receive. If you use any of its other products—Google Maps, Froogle, Google Book Search, Google Earth, Google Scholar, Talk, Images, Video, and News—it will keep track of which directions you seek, which products you shop for, which phrases you research in a book, which satellite photos and news stories you view, and on and on. Served up à la carte, this is probably no big deal. Many websites stow snippets of your data. The problem is that there’s nothing to prevent Google from combining all of this information to create detailed dossiers on its customers, something the company admits is possible in principle. Soon Google may even be able to keep track of users in the real world: Its latest move is into free wifi, which will require it to know your whereabouts (i.e., which router you are closest to).

Google insists that it uses individual data only to provide targeted advertising. But history shows that information seldom remains limited to the purpose for which it was collected. Accordingly, some privacy advocates suggest that Google and other search companies should stop hoarding user queries altogether: Internet searches, argues Lillie Coney of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, are part of your protected personal space just like your physical home. In February, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) introduced legislation to this effect, but Republicans have kept it stalled in committee. Google, which only recently retained a lobbying firm in Washington, is among the tech companies fighting the measure.

When I first contacted Google for this story, a company publicist insisted I provide a list of detailed questions, in writing; when I said that I had a problem with a source dictating the terms for an interview, he claimed that everyone who covers Google—including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal—submits advance questions. (A Times spokeswoman told me the paper sees no ethical problems with such a procedure, though individual reporters’ decisions may vary; an editor in charge of editorial standards at the Journal said the same thing.) The Google flack assured me that this was so he could find the best person for me to talk to—more information for Google, so that Google could better serve me.

Eventually he agreed to put me in touch, sans scripted questions, with Nicole Wong, Google’s associate corporate counsel. I asked her if the company had ever been subpoenaed for user records, and whether it had complied. She said yes, but wouldn’t comment on how many times. Google’s website says that as a matter of policy the company does “not publicly discuss the nature, number or specifics of law enforcement requests.”

So can you trust Google only as far as you can trust the Bush administration? “I don’t know,” Wong replied. “I’ve never been asked that question before.”

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